Update (1520ET): Shortly after Bloomberg broke the news, DeSantis dropped out of the Republican presidential primary Sunday.

In a video message, he endorsed Trump.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston Churchill pic.twitter.com/ECoR8YeiMm

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 21, 2024

*  *  *

After coming up short, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his top aides are reportedly having internal discussions over when and how he should drop out of the 2024 presidential race, according to Bloomberg, citing people briefed on the campaign’s conversations.

The discussions are fluid, with the governor and his wife, Casey, as the final decision-makers, but one possibility is to leave the race before voting starts in New Hampshire on Tuesday, January 23 to avoid an embarrassing third-place finish. -Bloomberg

According to a new poll by CNN and the University of New Hampshire, DeSantis has just 6% of the state’s Republican vote, vs. Trump at 50% and Haley at 39%.

Speaking of CNN, Jake Tapper is hearing the same thing as Bloomberg…

Sources tell me Gov Ron DeSantis is about to suspend his presidential campaign — imminently.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 21, 2024

That said, ABC News is reporting that DeSantis’ team is ‘pushing back’ on speculation that he may soon suspend his White House bid, after the Florida governor canceled high-profile scheduled appearances on NBC, CNN and WMUR, a New Hampshire TV station. He was also slated to spend most of the weekend campaigning with his allied super PAC, Never Back Down, but is instead returning to New Hampshire on Sunday for an event in Manchester.

“The media hits were canceled due to a scheduling issue and will be rescheduled. The governor will be traveling Sunday morning with the campaign and has public events scheduled Sunday evening through Tuesday in NH,” campaign spokesperson Bryan Griffin posted Saturday on X.

The media hits were canceled due to a scheduling issue and will be rescheduled.

The governor will be traveling Sunday morning with the campaign and has public events scheduled Sunday evening through Tuesday in NH.

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) January 20, 2024

Authored by Jonathan Turley, op-ed via The Hill,

“Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.”

Those words by author Milan Kundera could well have been written for Kevin Morris, a critical figure in the unfolding Hunter Biden scandal.

Morris (picture left below) was largely unknown to most people until he emerged as the Democratic donor who reportedly paid Hunter Biden millions to handle his unpaid taxes and maintain his lavish lifestyle.

The Hollywood lawyer and producer portrayed himself as a good Samaritan on a biblical scale — a good man who simply found a desperate stranger on the road and gave him more than $5 million.

His counsel, Bryan M. Sullivan stated that “Hunter is not only a client of Kevin’s, he is his friend and there is no prohibition against helping a friend in need, despite the inability of these Republican chairmen and their allies to imagine such a thing.” 

The statement captures the problem for Morris. It is increasingly hard to determine what Morris was at any given moment: Democratic donor, lawyer, friend. Indeed, that problem that some of us have raised for months.

Lawyers are not supposed to pay the bills of their clients.

Specifically, California Bar Rule 1.8.5(a) states that “[a] lawyer shall not directly or indirectly pay or agree to pay, guarantee, or represent that the lawyer or lawyer’s law firm will pay the personal or business expenses of a prospective or existing client.” They are required to maintain clear representational boundaries. This is also now the subject of a new bar complaint filed by a conservative legal group this week.

Friends have described Morris as a “rule-breaker” and admit that his relationship with Hunter raises eyebrows. “Certainly it’s not careful, but he’s a gunslinger,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “This is how he rolls.”

But the legal ethics rules are designed to avoid gunslinging generally and ambiguity specifically.

Hunter calls him both his lawyer and his “brother.” Lead counsel Abbe Lowell observed, “I have never in any of my representations of any other client — other than someone who is an immediate family member of one of my clients — known anyone who is like Kevin.”

When the relationship began, Morris was playing the role of loyal Democratic donor.

He was introduced to Hunter at a 2019 political fundraiser by another producer and Democratic deep pocket, Lanette Phillips. Soon thereafter, Morris was giving Hunter copious amounts of money and legal advice. That would include reportedly paying off Hunter’s long-delinquent taxes before criminal charges were filed. It also included paying for Hunter’s lavish lifestyle.

Morris may be most eager to avoid the label “democratic donor” because these payments could be viewed as an unreported campaign donation. Morris was brought in during Joe Biden’s campaign for president. Then, on February 7, 2020, Morris flagged how the taxes represented a “considerable risk personally and politically.” He seems to have sought to resolve that political liability by paying off the taxes and calling it a “loan.”

Those “loans” would continue, and Morris insists that it was all standard “loan” stuff. Except he is not a bank. He was repeatedly referring to Hunter as his “client.” 

It is also important that these millions are treated as loans because, if they are actually gifts, they could create a new tax problem. Hunter has to declare such “gifts.” 

Few would view Hunter as a good risk for a loan, given his history of stiffing a wide array of businesses and associates. Indeed, he reportedly even faced a complaint over failure to pay for alleged high-end prostitutes. He was even accused of using a credit card connected to his father to pay off an alleged Russian call-girl. Even the art dealer who recently sold Hunter’s art reportedly testified that Hunter never reimbursed him for the costs of the shows.

That art adds an interesting twist to the mysterious role of Morris. Recently, art dealer Georges Bergès blew away White House claims that Hunter had been barred from knowing the names of purchasers under a comprehensive ethics system. He admitted that Hunter knew the identity of 70 percent of the purchasers. 

It was not hard. Despite news reports of buyers flocking to buy the art, it turns out it was largely Morris who bought the art.   Notably, however, Morris only reportedly paid Bergès’ 40 percent commission on the $875,000 purchases. It is not clear whether Morris used the sales to wipe out part of the loan debt.

That would be a clever way to treat the money as a loan, if it were used for that purpose.

• You simply have Hunter crank out dubious pieces of art and arrange for an ally to throw art shows in New York.

• You then have media allies write how buyers were “floored” by Hunter’s talent.

• Finally, you pay the commission on the excessive prices for the art while writing off the value of the art as a type of in-kind payment of the loan.

While many mocked at the Pablo Picasso-level pricing of Hunter’s art pieces (some works approached half a million dollars), those inflated prices would be useful to count as direct or indirect payments for the loans.

We still do not know how these purchases or the loans were treated, and whether Morris was acting as a donor, friend, or lawyer. Now, Morris is adding a new role to this pile of identities, reportedly supporting a new movie on Hunter Biden. 

Call it “Mr. Biden Goes to Washington,” an effective rewrite of Frank Capra’s classic, only the corrupt establishment apparently wins.

In the movie, a young novice appointed to the U.S. Senate fights the corruption of Washington, where his senior senator has sold access and influence to James Taylor, a wealthy businessman. Taylor scoffs at the notion that the establishment can be challenged. After all, they control the media, and what the public will read and hear. As Taylor assured the senior senator, “I’ll make public opinion out there within five hours! I’ve done it all my life…You leave public opinion to me.”

Morris is still fighting to shape public opinion, and, in Hollywood, movies make reality.

Morris “makes public opinion,” and the media can be expected, again, to assist in those efforts.

Many in Washington believe that Hunter’s stunts in holding a press conference defying his subpoena, and later crashing his own contempt hearing, were literally made-for-television moments. These scenes were captured on film and will no doubt be featured in the new film on his heroic struggle.

The question is the audience for the film. Clearly, in the Beltway, audiences are likely to be sobbing with emotion as Hunter fights against inquiries into influence peddling. They will cheer at Joe Biden’s moment channeling John Wayne, when he declared, “No one f**ks with a Biden.”

However, most audience members would not have felt the same thrill if, at the end of the original movie, the corrupt Sen. Joseph Paine and the wealthy Taylor had emerged as the victors, fighting off the do-gooders and “boy rangers” supporting Jimmy Stewart’s main character.

The question is also who would play Morris — or more accurately, how many would have to play this “man with many faces.”

Sports Illustrated rights holder Arena Group has had its license to publish the magazine revoked by Authentic Brands Group after inability to make $3.75 million quarterly payment at the end of 2023.  In other words, the publisher likely isn’t bringing in enough profit to maintain the brand.  Under contract, Arena Group is required to pay another $45 million to ABG because of the loss of the license.  As a result, Sports Illustrated has been forced to layoff their entire staff while discussions are underway to salvage the arrangement. 

In a statement, Sports Illustrated Union and The NewsGuild of New York vowed to “fight for every one of our colleagues.”   But how could this have happened?  One of the oldest and best known names in sports commentary is now essentially defunct.

The signs were all there.

The shutdown takes place only thee years after the company committed to major layoffs in 2020 back when they were run by Maven, shaving $27 million from their costs compared to 2018.  Apparently, this wasn’t enough and ownership was acquired by Arena Group.  In November of 2023, SI was caught using fake journalists and AI generated content, further indicating that they were on the verge of going broke. 

The true cause will be conveniently ignored by the corporate media, but the woes of Sports Illustrated began directly after they tied the publication to woke messaging.  For example, the magazine began parading plus-sized (fat positivity) models in their sponsored runway shows and swimsuit additions in 2017.  For a publication that is supposed to be focused on athletic excellence, the idea of fat positivity is an obvious anathema for their core readership.  People who are incapable of athleticism in most arenas should not be used as representatives of the sporting world (or the pinnacle of beauty, for that matter).  

The company then latched onto the feminist “equal pay” movement for women’s sports, arguing that female athletes and clubs should be offered pay equal to male sports.  The movement completely ignored the key factors of audience interest; male athletes tend to make more money because far more people are interested in watching men’s sports. 

Sports Illustrated also began featuring transgender women (men dressed as women) in their women’s swimsuit editions, perpetuating the gender fluid ideology.  This led to a conservative boycott of the magazine in 2023, and now, here they are, out of business.

The carnage falling upon woke companies in the past couple years has been relentless.  Numerous Big Tech and entertainment platforms are suffering a string of layoffs and budget cuts and no one in the mainstream wants to acknowledge that the wokification of the corporate world is a primary contributor to their downfall. 

The bottom line? The vast majority of American consumers do not want woke content and will not pay for it.  Furthermore, the people that do want this kind of content are usually activists with no money to spend. 

Despite this reality, companies continue to embrace far-left ideology and promote it through their products and marketing to their own detriment.  This explains why the political left has been so hostile to free markets and the notion of catering to consumers – In a free market people can always walk away from woke businesses.  It doesn’t matter how much they saturate media with propaganda, all people have to do is not open their wallets.    

In a socialist or ESG-based world, such companies would be fully supported by governments and tax dollars.  In other words, you would be forced to pay for the transgender swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, whether you want to or not.  For now, thankfully, “Get Woke, Go Broke” is still a rule that widely applies.  

Electric bicycles were responsible for a record number of fires, injuries and deaths in New York City last year.

In total, e-bikes caused 267 fires, causing 18 deaths and 150 injuries in the city, the New York Fire Department (FDNY) told Fox News, which notes that the figures represent the highest levels of each statistic – with deaths jumping 200% and fires increasing 21% over last year.

“As we rely more and more on micromobility vehicles to earn a living in our daily lives, we increase the risk of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries. And as mentioned, we had over 100 deaths in this city alone on these batteries,” said Mayor Eric Adams (D) during an e-bike safety event last year.

When we tell you unregulated, illegal lithium-ion batteries are a hazard, WE MEAN IT. FDNY Fire Inspectors continue to check e-bike & e-scooter shops to ensure compliance, but many of devices & batteries are in private homes. They’re ticking time bombs, just watch our new PSA. pic.twitter.com/Y4Pl2grR80

— FDNY (@FDNY) January 16, 2024

“And one of the problems that we’ve noticed, when you look at those taped-up batteries, you see that they are refurbished,” he continued. “These shops are going inside attempting to refurbish the batteries and do it their own way. This is a safety issue.”

Amid the uptick in e-bike fires and deaths, New York City leaders led by Adams and FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh — who said last year that e-bikes are “incredibly dangerous devices” and called for additional regulation — have spearheaded a public education campaign about the dangers of the device and pushed policies to ensure safety.

In March 2023, Adams unveiled the city’s Charge Safe, Ride Safe plan to prevent further harmful e-bike incidents. Then, months later, he announced the city had been awarded $25 million in federal funding to install 173 outdoor e-bike charging stations. In December, Adams said his administration would soon launch a battery-charging pilot program for delivery workers. -Fox News

“We know these fires can cause serious injury, and even death. We are grateful to our partners in city government for their out-of-the-box thinking on how we can embrace this new technology while also protecting lives,” said Kavanaugh.

Meanwhile, NYC has passed several laws to regulate lithium-ion batteries sold within city limits, and has implemented a policy to expedite investigations into the dangers. Last June, NY AG Letitia James warned of “significant risks” associated with e-bikes.

WOAH! An e-bike battery caused an abrupt explosion, with the bike bursting into flames shortly after the owner noticed an odd smell and put it outside, as seen in a video released by the London Fire Brigade. pic.twitter.com/xMuaLvunc1

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 26, 2023

Earlier this month, an e-bike battery exploded in a Queens bike store, resulting in a two-alarm fire. The incident came just days after another e-bike battery fire caused an explosion in a public housing complex in the Bronx, resulting in one death and injuring six others.

Via SchiffGold.com,

A startling disconnect as we edge closer to the 2024 general election: On one hand, so-called “experts” parade optimistic economic reports, but for the average American, the story is starkly different.

 In heated debates, economists squabble over whether the public is hoodwinking pollsters or if mysterious forces are at play.

Our guest columnist explains how the government is playing a smoke-and mirrors-game with the economy.

 It’s more subtle than making up numbers.

They’re pumping up GDP and job figures through hefty spending and hiring. Unlike the struggling private sector, the government can spend tax dollars and create deficit-financed jobs without having to prove their worth:

The following article was originally published by the Mises Wire. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

As the 2024 general election gets closer, Democrats and proestablishment pundits are growing frustrated with the American public for not feeling as good about the economy as the so-called experts say they should. The elitism of this view aside, it is true that traditional economic indicators are pretty good and that, at the same time, people aren’t feeling good about the economy.

Center-left economists have been locked in a debate over whether people are lying to pollsters about experiencing hardship in what is actually an excellent economy or are struggling due to mysterious noneconomic factors.

Others, like Paul Krugman, have decided to blame Donald Trump and his supporters—framing the widespread economic pessimism as a MAGA ploy to win back the White House—a theory Jonathan Newman showed is disproven by the very data Krugman cites.

So, what’s really going on here?

Daniel Lacalle laid the truth out well in his recent appearance on Radio Rothbard. In short, the government is making the economy look a lot better than it is.

Those who argue the economy is doing great usually cite economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) and various measures of the employment rate.

And while on the surface it seems to make sense to use these indicators to get an idea of how the economy is faring overall, there’s one big problem.

None make any serious distinction between private economic activity and government spending.

But there is a big difference between the two.

Government, unlike any other entity in the economy, can simply take money and resources from others to spend on things and hire people. Whether or not the spending brings people value is irrelevant.

It’s the private sector that’s responsible for producing goods and services that actually meet people’s needs and wants. So, the private components of the economy have the most significant effect on people’s economic well-being.

And according to Lacalle, the private sector of the US economy is already experiencing a recession. However, the high levels of government spending are artificially boosting the GDP above the technical recession threshold. Similarly, government hires have featured disproportionally in the recent seemingly positive jobs reports.

That’s why we’re seeing a divergence between the positive economic data in the headlines and the more negative sentiments of the American people. It’s not a mystery, and it’s not fake news or partisanship. It’s the government.

But don’t expect any politicians, center-left economists, or proestablishment pundits to admit it. All insist the government can boost economic growth and employment—especially during times of war. Take, for instance, the myth that World War II brought an end to the Great Depression. What happened back then is similar to what we’re dealing with now, albeit on a much larger scale. The government spent and hired enough not only to hide the destructiveness of the war, but also to make it appear like a good thing for the economy.

That is the same trick at play today. Because the government printed trillions of dollars to hide the economic damage of the covid lockdowns, a tremendous amount of malinvestment has locked in a major market correction. Now, as the economy begins to falter, the government is again spending and hiring on a massive scale to keep up the illusion of a strong economy.

But most Americans can tell something’s off. And they’re right.

A Republican lawmaker in Maryland introduced a bill to increase ‘accountability’ to protect taxpayers from excessive fees and tax hikes imposed by unelected state agency officials. This initiative comes in response to concerns that radical progressives in the governor’s office and Annapolis are plunging the state into a fiscal crisis over the next five years. 

Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, told local media outlet Fox45 News that he plans to hold the Maryland General Assembly accountable with the “Taxpayer Disclosure and Protection Act” that aims to eliminate state agencies’ ability to increase fees and taxes without a formal vote in Annapolis. 

“I am and remain greatly concerned about the Maryland budget situation and ongoing spending in the Maryland legislature.” 

Mangione’s bill was unveiled shortly after Democrat Gov. Wes Moore announced his $63.1 billion state budget proposal on Wednesday. 

“I feel we must insist on accountability in any attempt to raise taxes or fees. This is only accomplished by recording various votes on these matters. The taxpayers are entitled to know who voted to increase any tax or fees, which is the purpose of the legislation,” Mangione said.

The lawmaker continued, “I believe we must be transparent with Maryland’s taxpayers, and I feel like we must be transparent on any decision to raise fees or taxes. The continued economic uncertainty has placed us in a situation where we must cut spending. I do not favor raiding our Rainy-Day Fund or using accounting maneuvers to continue to recklessly spend. Above all, I remain opposed to increasing fees and taxes. We need fiscal discipline.”

One example of zero accountability is the Maryland Gas Tax pushed by Democrats in 2012, which automatically increases yearly with no votes or accountability. Even in the worst inflation periods in a generation and the cost of living crisis, the tax went up without a vote. 

Mangione’s bill comes as Gov. Moore and radical progressives in the state are depleting the state’s coffers in a reckless spending spree, with projected estimates of a $1.8 billion deficit over the next five years. 

Former center-right Gov. Larry Hogan opined in local media outlet the Baltimore Banner that Democrats in the state are spending taxpayer funds like drunken teenagers with a newly minted credit card: 

Last year, the legislature adopted a staff recommendation to increase the state’s debt in one year by 40%. This borrowing is akin to building a bridge to nowhere. As in all walks of life, there is no free lunch when it comes to balancing the state’s budget. Passing any operating funds onto the state’s credit card is a dangerous tactic and jeopardizes future opportunities to utilize the credit markets for a true fiscal emergency.

Mangione’s bill may be a blueprint for other state legislators nationwide. 

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In a report published on Jan. 17, the American Cancer Society (ACS) estimated that new cancer cases will surpass 2 million in 2024, hitting a record high.

While the risk of dying from cancer has declined, cancer incidence has been rising for six of the most common cancers: breast, prostate, endometrial, pancreatic, kidney, and melanoma.

The new estimates represent a 2 percent increase from the ACS’s 2023 estimates.

“Overall cancer incidence is stable in men and increases slightly by 0.1 percent per year in women. The number of cancer cases increases each year mostly because of the aging and growth of the population,” Rebecca L. Siegel, lead author of the report, cancer epidemiologist, and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, told The Epoch Times.

“Prostate cancer is the most rapidly increasing—by 3 percent per year—mostly due to advanced-stage disease diagnosis,” Ms. Siegel added.

The report found that cancers have also been increasing in younger people, specifically colorectal cancer in those under 55 and cervical cancer in women aged 30 to 44. Oral cancers associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV) and liver cancer in women have also increased.

ACS’s estimation was based on case numbers reported from 2006 to 2020 in all 50 states. There is currently no available data on real-life cancer cases past 2020.

“Modeled counts were then projected forward 4 years based on the most recent 4-year average annual percent change,” the authors wrote in the report.

This means that the new facts and figures on 2024 “do not have information on possible COVID virus- or vaccine-related effects on cancer incidence,” Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus in epidemiology at Yale University, with particular interests in cancer, told The Epoch Times.

Dr. Risch said that ACS’s estimations for 2024 may be reliable “as long as nothing much is happening in the population.”

But with COVID-19 and its mass vaccine rollouts coming out at the end of 2020, “relying on the older data to estimate recent incidence would not be reliable,” he said.

Though the projection included 2020 data, the report is modeled on 15 years of data, so 2020’s impact on the report’s trajectory would be “highly drowned out” and mostly insignificant, Dr. Risch suggested.

“It would be useful to examine the 2020 data separately,” he said. He has analyzed the 2020 publicly available surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) data, which are also included in the ACS’s report.

“There is a deficit for 2020 of about 11 percent, which likely reflects the March–May lockdown effects that the ACS discusses as to how they accounted for that,” he explained.

The ACS researchers acknowledged that their report currently does not reflect possible changes impacted by the pandemic.

“Researchers have not yet analyzed the potentially myriad ways in which the pandemic affected these cancer statistics,” the ACS wrote in their media report.

“When data is available, researchers expect that the public health crisis of COVID-19 will be found to have delayed diagnoses and led to worse outcomes and more deaths. But it will take many years to parse out those effects,” they concluded.

Reasons for the Increase in Cancer Cases

While the rise in cancer cases could be partially due to overdiagnosis, the authors said that increased cancer screening is an unlikely cause.

Take colorectal cancer, for example.

“People born after the 1950s have higher risk for many cancers, most notably colorectal cancer. We know it is not more screening because the death rate for colorectal cancer is increasing in this population as well as the incidence rate,” Ms. Siegel said.

If the uptick is due to more screening, there should be a greater decline in the death rate.

The obesity epidemic likely contributes but does not fully explain the trend, she added.

“There is much research in this area, but some hypotheses include changes in diet like more processed food, changes in the gut microbiome, overuse of antibiotics, and microplastic exposure.”

Stress and changes in sexual behavior could also be a factor, according to Epoch Times columnist and infectious disease specialist Dr. Yuhong Dong. She highlighted the increase in cervical and oral cancers, which may be traced back to HPV.

“In recent decades, there is an emerging trend that people tend to be engaged in sexual activity at a young age and have multiple sexual partners, which can increase the likelihood of HPV infection,” she said.

“It is well-recognized that HPV is a carcinogenic virus. The role of HPV in causing cancer is primarily due to its cancer-inducing proteins. These proteins break down the body’s tumor-fighting mechanisms, leading to rapid and uncontrolled cell multiplication.”

Recently, more emerging evidence also suggests HPV is linked to both prostate and thyroid cancer.

COVID-19 and Vaccines

While the ACS data do not show any effects of COVID-19 and its vaccines, there are concerns that “frequent use of the COVID-19 vaccine could also be detrimental to our cellular genes and make them vulnerable to cancer,” Dr. Dong said.

The recent detection of the SV40 promoter/enhancer gene in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has also led some cancer experts to express concerns about potential cancer interactions.

Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, the director of the cancer center at Brown University, wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that while “the SV40 promoter is not the potent cancer causing element T-antigen of the SV40 virus,” he is concerned that the spike proteins produced from the virus and the vaccine may exert effects on other common cancer-enhancing pathways.

Studies have suggested that the spike protein may be able to interact with a well-known protein responsible for preventing cancer in the body called p53. If the p53 gene and its proteins get suppressed, the body may be at a greater risk of cancer.

“As a p53 researcher I wanted to study the spike protein more and it’s [sic] effects on p53, proposed it in 2020 but did not have sufficient resources,” Dr. El-Deiry wrote.

Thanks to the internet and (shrinking) press freedoms, legacy media outlets no longer have a monopoly on information and narratives.

Case in point, during a WEF discussion at Davos entitled “Defending Truth,” Wall St. Journal EIC Emma Tucker lamented this loss of control over ‘the facts,’ as Modernity.news reports.

“I think there’s a very specific challenge for the legacy brands, like the New York Times and like the Wall Street Journal,” Tucker said, adding “If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.“

“If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact,” she continued, adding “Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.”

Watch:

At a discussion titled ‘Defending Truth,’ the WSJ editor-in-chief admitted to #Davos2024 #WorldEconomicForum elites that the legacy media no longer ‘own the news’, lamenting “We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.” Report here: https://t.co/FO3ASOIyuM pic.twitter.com/ukZKP4esNs

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 19, 2024

Russia, Russia, Russia!

European Commission VP Věra Jourová also piped up during the same discussion, calling the rise of “disinformation” a “security threat,” and suggesting that “It was part of the Russian military doctrine that they will start information war, and we are in it now.”

Like when the Hillary Clinton campaign used a former (?) British spook’s Russian source to fabricate a hoax against Donald Trump, which was peddled through the Wall Street Journal and every single other legacy media outlet? That kind of information war? Or when 51 former US intelligence officials used disinformation to influence the 2020 election, suggesting the NY Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop bombshell was Russian meddling?

“Disinformation is a very powerful tool,” Jourová continued, adding that “In the EU we are focusing on improving of the system where the people will get the facts right. We don’t speak about opinions. We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.”

Bitch please.

VP of the EU at #Davos2024 on ‘disinformation’: “We are focusing on improving the system where the people will get the facts right…We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.” Whose facts? Report: https://t.co/FO3ASOIyuM pic.twitter.com/nZGMQ9SH23

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 19, 2024

 More:

As we highlighted earlier in the week, Jourová has spent her Davos time meeting the heads of the likes of YouTube and Meta and ensuring they “play by the rules,” while her boss, Ursula von der Leyen called for overarching globalist control over the flow of all information in the digital age. –Modernity.news

Full discussion: #WorldEconomicForum panel at #Davos2024 talks about ‘Defending Truth’ with EU VP saying they wish to control “the facts,” in the “information war,” and the WSJ editor-in-chief lamenting that they ‘no longer own the facts’. Report here: https://t.co/FO3ASOIyuM pic.twitter.com/zabZtj5ALL

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 19, 2024

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

It was billed as a way to protect the security of Israeli hockey players amid fallout over the Israeli-Hamas war until a backlash condemned the action. 

The International Ice Hockey Federation, or IIHF, first banned Israeli athletes from international competitions, then abruptly reversed that decision on Wednesday. 

The Federation this week determined that it did indeed have the “safety and security support needed” to allow Israel, which won the silver medal last year in its division, to take place in a tournament being held in Bulgaria. Previously, the IIHF had decided to exclude the Israeli team from all of its competitions “for the time being” out of concern for athletes’ safety.  

Exacerbating the tensions was a prior decision by the IIHF, after Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, to move a portion of the competition originally to be held in Israel to Bulgaria. 

The move to ban the Israeli hockey players from all international competition did not sit well with the Israel team or the National Hockey League, which expressed “significant concerns” about the decision and stated that it had been assured that the IIHF was not intentionally sanctioning the Israeli Federation.

But the controversy is far from over. While the IIHF reversed course about the upcoming tournament in Bulgaria, it said decisions about future tournaments, including the 2024 men’s and women’s world championships, would be made on a case-by-case basis.

“A one-week tournament with the participation of the Israeli national team without any guarantee about safety and security of all people involved is irresponsible,” the IIHF said in a statement.

On Sunday, the actions against Israeli athletes took a far darker turn. An Israeli soccer player for a Turkish club was detained by Turkish authorities and interrogated, then suspended and sent to Israel after he displayed a message of support during Sunday’s game for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Sargiv Jehezkel scored the game-tying goal on Sunday against another team in the Turkish league, and afterward, jogged to the center of the field, brought his hands to the cameras positioned there, and formed the shape of a heart. He then displayed a wristband with the words “100 days. Oct. 7” spelled out alongside a Star of David. 

After the action went viral on social media, the president of Jehezkel’s soccer club called the action “propaganda” in a series of posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. 

Just days later, Eden Kartsev, a second Israeli professional soccer player in Turkey, was detained by Turkish authorities for a public display of sympathy for hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. He, too, was booted off the team and booked on a flight back to Israel. 

Sports has officially become a new battlefield in the Israeli-Hamas war. Now, international sporting organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, and groups linked to it, are facing intense pressure to protect Jewish athletes from discrimination or harm in the ongoing political fallout of the Oct. 7 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza. 

Like the NHL, the IOC used its platform to take a stand on the issue, discussing the matter with both the National Olympic Committee of Israel and the IIHF over the past few weeks.

An IOC spokesperson told RealClearPolitics that it had made its position “very clear.” 

“Non-discrimination of any kind is part of the fundamental principles of the Olympic charter, and the IOC will always uphold these principles,” the spokesperson said in a statement. 

The IOC also expressed “full confidence” in the ability of its organizing committee and the French authorities to deliver “safe and successful games” this summer in Paris. 

“Since Paris was selected, security has been their No. 1 priority, and they have been anticipating a wide range of scenarios to maintain safe and secure games,” the IOC press team continued. 

History demands that the International Olympic Committee and other overseas athletic organizations take Jewish athletes’ security seriously. More than a half-century ago, attackers affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization infiltrated Munich’s Olympic Village and carried out an attack that would eventually leave 11 Israeli athletes dead, along with a West German policeman and five of the eight assailants. 

The Munich massacre that took place in the early hours of Sept. 5-6, 1972, was a wake-up call for Western governments to the threat of terrorism at international sporting events and the dire need for tight security and greater scrutiny when selecting venues. 

After the death of his Olympic teammates, legendary swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals and set seven world records at the 1972 Munich games, was forced to flee Germany in haste, hidden under a blanket and fearing for his life.

Despite this history and the IOC’s willingness to wade into the IIHF backlash, the committee has repeatedly side-stepped another front in the international sports battle stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. 

In February, the World Aquatic Federation is scheduled to host an international swimming competition in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The event normally determines who qualifies for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. But the IOC and World Aquatics for months has faced pressure to either move the event or change the qualifying regulations so that Jewish athletes will not be forced to attend or be penalized for skipping. 

Qatar in recent years has served as an asylum for Hamas’ political leadership, and it has long provided the terrorist organization with financial assistance estimated at roughly $1.8 billion in 2021.

While Qatar has recently tried to burnish its image, hosting the World Cup in 2022 despite an avalanche of criticism from human rights groups, the country has drawn intense condemnation for the statement by its minister of foreign affairs blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas assault, which left 1,200 people dead, including women and children, and 239 people held hostage. 

In the past few months, Qatar has interceded between Hamas and Israel, as well as the United States, in negotiating the release of more than 100 hostages. But those efforts stalled in December when Hamas rebuffed two hostage release offers in exchange for a pause in the fighting. 

The IOC has repeatedly referred any questions to World Aquatics regarding the decision to keep the championship in Doha without providing alternative qualifying options for Jewish athletes and the Israeli swim team. It did so again Wednesday when RCP reached out for comment, arguing that the Doha swimming championship is “outside the remit of the Olympic Games” and “not held under the authority of the IOC.” 

That lack of jurisdiction, however, didn’t stop the IOC from taking a public stand on the IIHL’s ban on Jewish athletes competing in European countries. 

“A country that can’t guarantee the security of its participants shouldn’t be hosting these matches,” said David May, research manager for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “There’s always a danger of being killed or kidnapped or arrested in a hostile country, as we’ve now seen with the soccer players in Turkey.” 

“Qatar remains problematic from a security standpoint because they host Hamas,” added May, who has written extensively about Qatar’s ties to terrorism and several Arab countries’ mistreatment of Israeli and Jewish athletes.

But even beyond security, the allegation of corruption and fraud by Qatari officials should give the World Aquatics Federation great pause before moving forward with Doha as a host, May asserted, before taking a shot at the money and influence game Qatar engages in to host these types of international events. 

“I guess you could say, big swimming pools of cash [were likely involved],” May remarked. 

After Turkish authorities arrested then expelled Israeli soccer players from the country, Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar told the Jewish Insider that the incidents may be tied to the “involvement of a lot of Qatari money.” 

In December, when security concerns first arose among Jewish athletes being forced to attend the Doha championship or risk their Paris qualifications, World Aquatics stood by its decision to hold the event in Qatar and expressed confidence in the country’s ability to protect Jewish swimmers. Yet, it said it had opened “a dialogue” with the Israeli Federation, but “no separate or unique qualification pathways have been discussed at this time.” 

“The safety of all aquatic athletes remains a priority, and the World Aquatics Championships Doha 2024 event will be no different in that respect,” the organization told RCP in a statement. “The Qatari organizers and authorities have put in place extensive plans and preparations to make sure all necessary security measures will be applied to protect all those participating and attending.” 

Asked earlier this week about the recent developments involving arrests of Israeli soccer players in Turkey, World Aquatics said only that the “discussions are ongoing.” 

IOC and World Aquatics intransigence comes in the face of growing pressure. Several international officials have appealed to the organization to move the swimming venue or change Olympic qualifying regulations to allow Israeli and other Jewish athletes to skip the event. Officials from the United Kingdom, Germany, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, and several Scandinavian countries have pressed the Federation to relocate the swimming event. 

Advocates for moving the event say they are perplexed by the IOC’s unwillingness to take a stand against the Doha event after IOC President Thomas Bach demonstrated a keen awareness of the security concerns facing Jewish athletes. During a 2022 event in Tel Aviv, Bach apologized for waiting 50 years to commemorate the Israel victims of the Munich Massacre “in a dignified way” and called the event one of the “darkest days in Olympic history.” 

More recently, after the Oct. 7 attack against Israel and the subsequent Israeli counteroffensive, Bach underscored the need for unity in the sporting world amid increasing global tensions. 

“The current geopolitical tensions are extremely complex. In such times, the unifying power of sport is more important than ever before,” he told an audience in an opening address at the 2023 International Federation Forum in Switzerland in mid-November.

“Today, millions of people around the globe are longing for such a unifying force that brings us all together in our so confrontational world,” he continued. “Our role is clear: to unite – and not to deepen divisions. Therefore, we carry an important responsibility – to stand together for the power of sport and to live up to our shared mission to make the world a better place through sport.”

Eric Spitz, a Jewish tech and sports businessman whose daughter is a dual citizen of Israel and the United States and an Israeli women’s swim team member, is spearheading a coalition demanding a change of venue or alternative qualifying rules. The coalition launched a website, www.notodoha.com, and Spitz, (no relation to Mark Spitz), sent a letter in December to the IOC, pressing for a solution that would not force Israeli and Jewish swimmers to jeopardize their safety in Doha.

Eric Spitz is now imploring Bach to live up to that promise and ensure that Israeli and Jewish swimmers can continue pursuing their sport without risking their safety or antisemitic harassment by requiring their travel to Doha to qualify for the Olympics. 

“For many, athletics serve as a sanctuary from the chaos and turmoil of life,” Spitz wrote in his letter to the IOC. “The Olympic movement, which represents the pinnacle of non-violent competition, fosters a global fellowship bound by an unwavering passion for the sport. At this moment, Jewish and Israeli athletes are navigating some of the most arduous trials of their lives … inaction on the part of the IOC would unfairly remove a source of joy these athletes cling to.” 

Qatar and Iran have a long history of discrimination and antisemitic demonstrations against Israeli athletes. In 2013, organizers of a Swimming World Cup in Doha failed to show the Israeli flag in their computer graphics, substituting a white flag, and failing to display the name Israel, instead using “IRS” in several of the cup’s races. The international snubbing earned Qatar a formal warning from World Aquatics, then known as Federation Internationale de Natation. 

During the World Cup, international pressure forced Qatar to allow Israeli visitors and athletes, and in recent years, international bodies have tried to crack down on Doha and Tehran’s discrimination against Israeli athletes.

Even after the World Cup, Qatar has a long way to go when it comes to becoming a trusted, secure place for Israeli and Jewish athletes. May argued that the foreign minister’s statement supporting Hamas and Qatar’s long history of discrimination against Jewish athletes should have been a dealbreaker in hosting any international sporting championships. 

“Unfortunately, Israel is a prime target for attacks going back to the Munich Olympic massacre,” he stressed. “So, what to some institutions or countries might seem an unnecessary caution, unfortunately, is born out of experience.”  

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.